A protective helmet is often used to protect a wearer's head during practice of a sport such as hockey, lacrosse, ringette, football and baseball. A protective helmet sometimes comprises a face guard for protecting a wearer's face against impact with an object such as a hockey implement (e.g. a stick, a bat, etc.), a puck, a ball, or any other object involved in a given sport.
One type of face guard is a wire face guard, which includes a series of horizontal and vertical wires defining a protective grid extending in front of the wearer's face. The wires are dimensioned and configured so as to prevent an object from passing through the protective grid and impacting the wearer's face. For instance, in hockey, the wires are dimensioned and configured so as to prevent a hockey stick blade or puck from passing through the protective grid and impacting the wearer's face.
Wires of existing face guards are typically made of steel and have a circular cross-section with a diameter sufficiently large to meet strength and impact resistance requirements established by standards organizations. However, this requirement placed on the diameter of wires negatively affects visibility of the wearer since it results in wires being more obstructive to vision.
There is therefore a need for a face guard providing improvements in terms of visibility of the wearer while still providing sufficient strength and impact resistance.